


Seeming to Imply Things

by gay_possum_god



Category: I Want To Go Home! - Gordon Korman
Genre: Birthdays, Growing Up, Lock Picking, M/M, Permission, Volleyballs - Freeform, bailing bucket, but "doesn't" snoop, i can't believe the beaver didn't already have a tag, official permission, rudy does track
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 17:56:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18628324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gay_possum_god/pseuds/gay_possum_god
Summary: Sitting on his bed in all his clothes at 10:30 pm holding a slice of mostly melted ice cream cake and a plastic fork, Mike looked at Rudy and said, “So, I guess this is it.”





	Seeming to Imply Things

Sitting on his bed in all his clothes at 10:30 pm holding a slice of mostly melted ice cream cake and a plastic fork, Mike looked at Rudy and said, “So, I guess this is it.”

Mike saw Rudy three times a year: at Algonkian Island for camp, at the Miller’s house for Rudy’s birthday and at his own family’s house for his own birthday. That was the way it had been at least, since that first summer when they were thirteen.

But this past summer had been the last summer at Algonkian before they aged out. (Rudy had celebrated this by trying to escape at least once a day, and over the course of their four weeks there had been two possibly-natural disasters which Rudy neither claimed nor denied responsibility for.) Rudy had turned eighteen back in December, and now it was just Mike’s eighteenth birthday before they both went off to god-knows-where for University.

Mike had invited most of his school friends and Rudy, and Mike’s mother had invited most of Mike’s extended family, a friend to keep Vicky company and Rudy’s family. Only the Millers and three others had actually RSVP’d, so when thirty people had arrived, Mike had ended up having to spend most of his own party running around making sure everything was in order. (“A very adumbrative introduction to adulthood,” Rudy had commented, while following Mike to the basement to watch Mike get more chairs.)

Rudy mostly stuck by Mike’s side and did his best to avoid Vicky and her friend, Coralann, who hounded him with questions at every opportunity. (Is it true you might go to the olympics next year? What is Rudy short for? Rudolf? Ruddyard? Does your brother have a girlfriend yet?)

The party had started at 05:00 and was supposed to end at 07:00, but it wasn’t till 08:30 that any of the guests even began to leave. And it was 10:00 by the time the Websters found that they once again had the house to themselves. (And Rudy, who was spending the night.)

“Did you find the sleeping bag camping pad alright in the garage?” Mike’s dad asked, as Mike and Rudy began to drift towards the foot of the stairs.

“Yep, thanks for letting us use it, Dad.”

“And you’re going to sleep on it and let Rudy have the bed?” Mike’s Mom prompted.

“Of course, Mom.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Webster,” Rudy reassured her, “at Alcatraz this past summer, I had to wrestle a fully grown beaver; I’m sure if it comes to it, I can claim the bed by force.”

At this, Carolann, who was also spending the night, giggled.

“Oh I wouldn't worry about Mike not sharing the bed, if I were you,” Vicky said with a sly smile. (This made Carolann giggle too. Mike turned bright red, and Rudy didn’t look like he had heard anything at all.)

Once Mike and Rudy had extracted themselves and made their way upstairs, Rudy said, “I have something for you,” and opened a drawer. In the drawer was a very melted piece of ice cream cake. “I figured you should get a piece of your own cake.”

“Thank you,” said Mike as he reached for it, suddenly exhausted. As he sat down on his bed, though, he a thought struck him. “Wait a minute, how did you get into my room? The door was locked.”

Rudy shrugged. “It was a simple lock.”

“You snooped through all my stuff didn’t you,” accused Mike, half playfully.

“I don’t snoop.” In Mike’s experience, this did not only mean that Rudy almost certainly did snoop, but that he was very good at it.

And it was in this moment of nostalgia about all the things Rudy “didn’t do” very well, that it hit Mike how final that night would be.

“So, I guess this is it.”

“What do you mean,” Rudy replied raising just one eyebrow with the precision of a eighteen years of practice.

“Well, we can’t go back to Alcatraz, and when we’re at University we’ll probably too far to do birthdays.”

“You’re just not trying hard enough,” accused Rudy. “If you’re farther away next birthday, then I’ll just have to take a few days off of school to see you. It’ll be terribly tragic missing classes, and god forbid I have to miss track practice, or even a meet!” Rudy was lost for half a second in his own fantasy before finishing, “but as my best friend, you are worth it.”

“I’m truly flattered,” Mike chuckled gently, uplifted both by Rudy’s optimism (or the closest thing Rudy had to optimism) and by the deadpan humor that Mike missed during the parts of the year he spend away from Rudy.

“As for our dear friends at Alcatraz, I already have plans. You see, it seems so cruel to just leave other young boys there to be tortured just because we’ve aged out of the system. I think the only fair thing to do is break in and stage a mass prison break.”

Mike laughed for real this time.

“For this, of course, we’ll need a large boat (with a bailing bucket), two or three pounds of army rations, one thousand volleyballs and, most importantly, permission. Official permission.”

Rudy said this all with a completely blank face, but Mike was sprawled on the bed in peals of laughter. But Mike knew Rudy well enough by this point not to be embarrassed because Rudy enjoyed making him laugh.

“You know,” Mike said once he was mostly done laughing, “other campers who want to go back to camp do it as counselors.”

Rudy raised the other eyebrow. “Are you suggesting we become clones?”

“No, I was just saying that’s what some people do. Besides, not all the clones—I mean counselors were terrible. Remember Pierre?”

“Yes,” Rudy replied almost wistfully, “I do. He did seem much less brain-washed didn’t he. But still we would make terrible clones. Besides, I don’t think it would be a good idea to leave us in a room to ourselves for a month.”

On the last comment, Rudy’s eyes wandered for a moment before coming back up to meat Mike’s, and Mike’s face burned red. Rudy had begun making comments like that during their third summer at Alcatraz, and Mike still didn’t know how to react.

Mike didn’t know what to do with the new silence, so he put the remains of his soggy cake on his bedside table and looked at the clock.

“It’s 11:00,” he said.

“So it is,” replied Rudy matching Mike’s lack of enthusiasm.

“We should probably go to sleep.”

“We could,” Rudy said, and got up and walked to the bed. He looked down this time with both eyebrows raised at Mike. “Will you give me the bed, or will I have to fight you?”

“Well after that fully grown beaver at Alcatraz, I shouldn’t be any challenge.”

Mike had meant it as a joke, but Rudy bent down and scooped him up and turned around. Mike braced to be dropped on the floor, but instead Rudy threw himself down backwards onto the bed.

Mike startled and let out a noise halfway between a choke and a scream. Rudy laughed and whispered, “Now you know what it feels like to be betrayed,” in his ear. Rudy’s breath tickling his neck.

They lay there just like that, Rudy’s arms around Mike and half-off-half-on the bed, for a time that felt both like hours and seconds. Eventually Mike broke the silence.

“Are we gonna sleep like this?”

“In our clothes?”

“Well yeah, but also,” Mike then twisted enough to look Rudy in the eyes, “together.”

Rudy's face stayed as frustratingly blank as ever. “That seems to imply something.”

Mike was tired of not understanding, and this might be the end anyway, so he replied, “A lot of the things you’ve said recently have seemed to imply something.”

Rudy’s poker face almost broke for a moment, then he stayed silent for just a bit too long.

Mike was just starting to get worried when Rudy said, “A lot of the things I’ve said have meant something.”

Rudy’s hand that had been on Mike’s back brushed up to the back of Mike’s neck and rested there. Rudy gazed at Mike with an expression that would be unreadable by anyone else, but Mike knew Rudy. After all, you can only attempt to escape Alcatraz with someone so many times and not know them better than anyone else on the planet.

So Mike brought his right hand up to cup Rudy’s jaw and leaned in slowly.

The first time they kissed was very timid. Even Rudy wasn’t his usual fearless self. It lasted just a moment and was mostly just brushing lips, but when they pulled back, Rudy smiled wide and Mike got to see his dimples for the second time in the entire time they had been friends. (The first, and only other, time had been during the flood in the first year at Alcatraz). So they kissed again and again. It wasn’t long before they both found their confidence and Mike confirmed his suspicion that kissing was one of the many things Rudy was very good at. And they both fell asleep there, half-off-half-on the bed and together. (When they arrived downstairs the next morning in rumpled clothing with Mike’s face red as a stop sign, Carolann giggled.)

They kissed a few weeks later too, on their first date. And many times over the summer. (Their mass prison break didn’t work, but they did make it into camp and got to see Chip flip an actual table with anger.) Over winter break, Mike went to Rudy’s birthday and kissed him when they got a moment to themselves. A few months later, Rudy skipped a few days of school (and a track meet) to go to Mike’s birthday where he kissed him in front of every (who had found out by that point). 

When Rudy was getting ready to graduate, he took off another few days (and missed another track meet) to make sure that Mike wasn’t convinced once again that it was all going to be over.

**Author's Note:**

> I loved this book, and I'm so glad I was able to finally find other people who've read it. Anyway, I'll probably edit this and repost it once I'm awake enough to proof-read.


End file.
